Assignment 11 - Benjamin Givens

The largest fear comes when you don't expect anything to go wrong, yet the universe refuses to care. When something expected goes wrong and its your fault, it's difficult to be too upset or emotional. You feel bad, but what can be done? However, when everything appears fine, and then a trapdoor clicks and everything falls down, fear shows its raw form. For me, when I legitimately forget an assignment, and everyone else knows and there is no time to try to do it before its due, an enormous and unrelenting feeling of anxiety and fear pressures me like a penny being pressed into a souvenir coin. It has nothing to do with the outcome; it has everything to do with the expectations that I will fail to meet, with nothing to save me. No amount of legitimate reasons can make up for the mistake, because that is what it is—a mistake. A mistake made by me. When it is something premeditated, when I decide that I just can't do an assignment, it's easy to take the blame. To accept that the one responsible is me. But when there is an easy target, it's so difficult to accept that there were things I could have done to prevent what happened. To accept. But in that time, all I feel is fear.